A turbomachine, such as a gas turbine, generally includes an inlet section, a compressor section, a combustion section that includes a plurality of combustors, a turbine section and an exhaust section. The inlet section cleans and conditions a working fluid (e.g., air) and supplies the working fluid to the compressor section. The compressor section progressively compresses the working fluid and supplies a high pressure compressed working fluid to the combustors where it is mixed with a fuel and burned in a combustion chamber to generate combustion gases having a high temperature and pressure. The combustion gases flow along a hot gas path into the turbine section where they expand to produce work. For example, expansion of the combustion gases in the turbine section may rotate a shaft connected to a generator to produce electricity.
Each combustor includes various combustion hardware components. For example, a conventional gas turbine combustor may include one or more fuel nozzles, a combustion liner, a cooling flow sleeve, a transition duct, an impingement sleeve, a cap assembly and/or various mounting hardware such as brackets and radial compression or hula seals. Over time, various factors including thermal cycling, vibrations and/or pressure pulses within the combustor may result in combustion component degradation, thus resulting in a combustor that operates outside of an acceptable performance range or that fails entirely. As a result, regularly scheduled outages for inspection and repair must be executed, thus affecting machine availability.
In order to achieve acceptable system durability and reliability, individual combustor and/or overall combustion system health should be carefully monitored and controlled between the scheduled outages. Therefore, a system and method for detecting and/or predicting an at-fault combustor during operation of the combustor would be useful.